Wild and Distant Seas

A Novel

By: Tara Karr Roberts

Narrated by: Natasha Soudek

Evangeline Hussey has made a home for herself on Nantucket, though she knows she is still an outsider to the island's small close-knit community, one that by 1849 has started to feel the decline of a once-thriving whaling industry. Her husband, Hosea, and the life they built together, was once all she needed—but now Hosea is gone, lost at sea. Evangeline is only able to hold on to his inn, and her place on the island, by employing a curious gift to glimpse and re-form the recent memories of those who would cast her out.

One night, an idealistic sailor appears on her doorstep asking her to call him Ishmael. He seeks only a warm bed and a bowl of chowder, and yet suddenly, unsettlingly, her careful illusion begins to fracture. He soon sails away with Ahab to hunt an infamous white whale, and Evangeline is left to forge a new life from the pieces that remain.

Her choices ripple through generations, across continents, and into the depths of the sea, in a narrative that follows Evangeline and her descendants from mid-nineteenth century Nantucket to Boston, Brazil, Florence, and Idaho. Moving, beautifully written, and elegantly conceived, Wild and Distant Seas takes Moby-Dick as its starting point, but Tara Karr Roberts brings four remarkable women to life in a spellbinding epic all her own.

©2024 Tara Karr Roberts (P)2024 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books

A story for adolescents?

I liked the concept but the story was more for adolescent girls. The generations and how they related to Ishmael was confusing at times.

Can’t stand the narrators wet gurgle

The story is ok but this review is for the audiobook which I am struggling to get through because of the wet gurgle of the narrator. Like her mouth is full of saliva.

Very engaging

I loved the story intertwined with the generations as well as the places in the travels of the characters. I loved that there were levels of different things and that it came back around to where it started. Would love more of these books.